Vasika
Udurawane
Writer
Extinctions are a part of the Earth’s story and play a massive part in the evolution of new classes of animals and plants. New species arrive to fill in the void and life begins again. This is a very gradual and almost gentle process, with the organisms fading out thanks to the tiniest environmental alterations. Some can be much bigger in scale. Altogether the planet has experienced five mass extinctions, brought on by continental shifts or celestial disasters like the death of the dinosaurs. But nature does not always lend a hand in this task.
Some creatures were driven to oblivion by none other than mankind, both out of ignorance or fear and even simple human curiosity. Most of these creatures were isolated in island worlds, lost in time and separated from everywhere else until we discovered them. During the age of exploration, we were driven to colonize new horizons and with us came an end to everything new and unique.
Sometimes however, it is our own spirit and drive for development that finishes off the most unique and charismatic of creatures. Imagine a world where you could see the sky be darkened by millions of pigeons, meet ten-foot tall flightless birds in the Madagascan forests or swim through the Arctic seas with gigantic kelp-eating manatees. Some of them were so recent that even in the 21st Century, we have seen slight glimpses and felt their presence where they once existed. This is a list of the most remarkable and most memorable recently extinct animals of all time. This list is compiled according to severity, for even the largest animal populations can be wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Baiji
Location: Yangtze River, China
Last seen: August 2007
Freshwater dolphins are somewhat elusive and rather new to the public consciousness. They are rarely seen by people. They exist today most famously in the Amazon and also in the Ganges and Indus rivers. All of them are incredibly rare due to pollution and overfishing. But there was also another member in this family. This was the baiji, the river dolphin of the Yangtze. The Yangtze River is China’s most massive river system and also contains the greatest biodiversity.These creatures were often regarded as the Goddess of the Yangtze, but not even divine status in local folklore was enough to save them.
This river is also one of the most populated areas in China, undergoing massive development projects all around its lowermost areas. It is the site of damming projects, like the construction of the Three Gorges Dam which took place from 1994 to 2008. It is now the world’s largest hydroelectric facility in terms of energy output and the world’s biggest power station, period. This was, however, at a great cost. Chinese rivers are now highly polluted and this surge of development had a drastic effect on the Yangtze ecosystem.
These creatures were never actually common, even in the past. The highest ever recorded population was six thousand animals in the 1950s and this number has been plummeting ever since. Just forty-seven years later there were thirteen left. About nine years ago an expedition set out to locate any remaining baiji but was too late by then. The last recorded sighting was in 2007, but whether or not this was a dolphin or another creature has yet to be determined. The Goddess of the Yangtze thus lost her place in the zoological pantheon and was finally declared a thing of the past.
Great Auk
Location: North Atlantic
Last seen: July 3, 1844
This bird became famous as the “penguin of the north”, even though it was closer to puffins and razorbills than to anything else. Like the razorbill, and pretty much all penguins, it had a two-tone coloration with a black back and white belly. Its calls were said to consist of harsh, hard croaks like most marine birds. If their modern relatives are anything to go by, great auk colonies must have been immense, staining entire islets and rocks with their bicolored bodies. Unlike puffins though, the great auk was unable to fly and thus had to resort to a much more grounded lifestyle, waddling clumsily on land. They were, however widespread in their prime, ranging from Spain to Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The great auk was an exceptional swimmer and diver, swimming after swift Atlantic fish like herring, capelin and menhaden while avoiding polar bears and orcas.
The great auk was certainly exploited in the past. Stone Age fishermen hunted this creature, but it was not enough to actually put a dent in its populations. Neither was the predation by tribal groups like Beothuks and other Arctic people to blame for its extinction. A growing interest in the Northwest Passage during the 16th Century probably contributed to its demise. At this time, marine travelers from Europe were always ready to explore and chart whatever new regions they found. This meant that food was necessary in large quantities and a flightless bird was a perfect catch. There was also a growing interest in the soft down of marine birds and the great auk was hunted for its feathers for a while.
It actually received official protection in 1553, although even this did not stop the mass-scale hunting. The bird was not just killed for food or feathers anymore but instead as fishing bait. This practice was still in play, and not even the threat of flogging could prevent it. As the bird grew rarer it became more valuable, and skeletons, eggs and taxidermied specimens were always admired in museum collections. The two last great auks were killed on July 3rd, 1844 on the tiny isle of Eldey. The penguin of the north was once again sighted eight years later in Newfoundland but help was far out of reach. by now.
Thylacine
Location: Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea
Last seen: September 7, 1936
Tasmania’s largest predator, the thylacine, has often been called the Tasmanian wolf, or even tiger. This name comes from both their superficially doglike size and shape and from the stripes on their hindquarters. It was not a relative of dogs but the biggest carnivorous marsupial to survive into historical times. The thylacine only evolved this body form due to similar roles in their ecosystems, a phenomenon called convergent evolution. It had the typical marsupial pouch like a kangaroo that opened out backwards to make running through thick bush much easier.
Thylacines have been the subject of misunderstandings since the first European colonists arrived on the island. While they were thought to kill sheep and poultry in large numbers, they actually made their living hunting the native prey. This included the now-extinct Tasmanian emus, as well as small wallabies, wombats and possums. New evidence however, suggests that they probably hunted game somewhat smaller than themselves due to their weakly built skulls. It was also able to open its jaws up to a hundred and twenty degrees, far wider than any other carnivorous mammals today. Thylacines were also much more powerfully built than either, and were probably more akin to ambush, rather than pursuit hunters.
Tasmanian farmers were the first to start hunting thylacines. From 1830 onward, there was a price on its head and a huge killing spree began. It is not just the hunting of the animal but also the introduction of livestock that contributed to this event. For one, the native herbivores were competing with much more advanced and adaptable sheep and cattle, and thus they began to lose their habitat. Even introduced dogs and foxes hunted some of the native wildlife and this put added pressure on the specialized thylacine. The very last one alive was Benjamin, an animal that spent his last days at the Hobart Zoo. There is footage of him to be found, showing the creature yawning, scratching himself and going about life like he would. He died in 1936, on the seventh of September, supposedly of neglect.
Steller's Sea Cow
Location: North Pacific coast (Japan to California)
Last seen: 1768
One of the fastest extinctions of any large animal has to be that of the Steller’s sea cow. It was first discovered living in the Bering Sea by explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller during 1741 and was extinguished a mere 27 years after. This animal was probably not so common to begin with, existing only in a small strip of sea. It was also the biggest of all sea cows, the group containing manatees and dugongs. It was over twice as big as these, reaching ten tons and nine meters long, but superficially it might not have been too different. It was still a herbivore, feeding on kelp and other cold water plants. Descriptions of the animal speak of a rough, ridged hide sometimes likened to tree bark. It also had an exceptionally small and narrow head and a pair of large tusks to help gather its food, and for dealing with rivals.
Big and slow-moving, the Steller’s sea cow was probably one of the easiest targets for an enterprising hunter. It was also a surface swimmer, loitering around the tops of cold-loving kelp and other marine algae. Swimming with manatees today is not the most difficult of tasks and certainly they were hunted for its oil, skin and meat.
Even before the 1700s, its polar home was a prison rather than a good stronghold. It was probably quite a widespread animal in its prime though, with fossils known from Japan to California, the best places for large kelp beds. It was also hunted by coastal aboriginal people before its discovery by Steller. It may have already been endangered, a huge and slow-moving animal that lived at the water’s surface and probably bred slowly too.The Steller’s sea cow was a proper gentle giant, and it paid for this with its dear life.
Dodo
Location: Mauritius
Last seen: 1662
The poster child for extinction or obsolescence is the big flightless pigeon of Mauritius, the strange and ever-popular dodo. The bird went extinct in 1662, and Lewis Carroll’s work turned it into a fixture in popular culture. It was part of a rather large fauna of giant tortoises and other tropical flighted and flightless birds like parrots, ducks, night herons and rails. It used its powerful beak to crack the fruits of pandanus and tambalacque trees, and these members of the palm family still indeed bear large nuts. The tale of this bird’s extinction has been repeated widely through the years. It is known to the public as the archetype fat, slow and stupid creature that lived in its own paradise until humanity appeared and wiped it out of existence. But there is much more to this tale than meets the eye.
For one, the dodo has been known by not just the Dutch colonists but also by the Mughals, who were powerful traders in their own rights. The mural of birds by Ustad Mansur has been regarded as one of the best depictions of the creature. It is a dark-colored meter-tall creature, and stands in the middle of a parkland, flanked by other more everyday birds. One of the most famous ones though, is the rather stunning ‘Edward’s dodo’ picture by Roelant Savery. Both of them were drawn in the 17th Century. This is also where the popular image of the fat, stupid dodo comes from but this may be an image of an overfed and obese captive animal. The Indian mural probably shows one in a much more natural light, a wild animal with its belly well off the ground and not hanging close to it.
The dodo’s extinction may be due to a number of factors. For one, flightless birds on islands take the place of mammalian herbivores elsewhere and they mostly evolve in an ecosystem without many intelligent predators. The first human visitors on Mauritius were medieval Arab traders but they did not settle here. It was the Dutch East India Company that contributed to the bird’s demise much later. They hunted the dodo to extinction, taking advantage of the bird’s lack of fear, just as they did with the other endemic creatures of the island. Even much of Mauritius’ forests are now nonexistent due to deforestation and clearing of land over the centuries. Even introduced monkeys and livestock managed to compete with these native animals, thus driving them and the dodo itself to extinction.
Barbary Lion
Location: North Africa
Last seen: 1942, possibly 1950s
The Romans were infamous for their excesses, and this included mass slaughters of the Barbary lion. These magnificent animals were pitted against gladiators in the Colosseum in some of the most gruesome and bloodiest entertainments known to mankind. They were even owned by the likes of Arabic royalty and both the London Zoo and the Tower of London once owned Barbary lions for a while. This exploitation meant that these lions were soon pushed into smaller and smaller territories in their already harsh environment.
Widely considered as one of the most imposing and massive lion subspecies, the Barbary lion lived further north than today’s Sub-Saharan cats. The cold temperatures of the Atlas Mountain winter meant larger manes, sometimes reaching their bellies. They also lived in much smaller groups than their cousins, hunting in either mated pairs or at most, simple nuclear families as per contemporary observations. Living in smaller groups was also an adaptation to living in a much more seasonal habitat, and small families require less food. While they took livestock on occasion, the real prey of these lions included the Barbary stag, gazelle and wild boar. They also lived alongside a now-extinct subspecies of North African brown bear, also used in gladiatorial games as per numerous Roman mosaics.
The extinction of the Barbary lion has always been a controversial subject. Today, there are plenty of lions with long, dark manes but this alone is not enough to mark them out as modern remnants of this extinct subspecies. In fact many zoo lions in cold countries will develop larger manes than normal, and even a higher testosterone level will result in the same.
Most texts show the extinction date of the Barbary lion as being in 1942, with the last wild one being shot in Morocco. There is, however, an interest in actually breeding back this animal from extinction. For one, DNA testing has revealed that there have been, and still may be a few Barary/Sub-Saharan lion crossbreds in zoos. Morocco’s Rabat Zoo claims to have thirty-five purebred North African lions. They were owned by the country’s royal family for centuries, but whether this is true or not is up for debate. Proper genetic testing is the only way to tell whether a lion has any North African blood in it, and most of the time, it is too contaminated to be a pure-blooded Barbary.
Aurochs
Location: Europe, Asia, North Africa
Last seen: 1627
Yet another creature that the Ancient Romans knew quite well, but they were not responsible for this beast’s extinction. The aurochs is also widely considered to be the ancestor of all modern cattle. with the Indian subspecies giving rise to the humped zebu and oxen of their homeland and the European aurochs becoming the taurine cattle of Europe. How this massive creature was domesticated and made more docile is anyone’s guess. The European aurochs was a bold, fearsome forest animal with massive horns, and one of the largest post-Ice Age herbivores on its continent along with the moose and wisent, or bison. The bulls were jet-black and were powerfully muscled. They were close to a ton in weight and stood as high as a man at the shoulder.
Aurochs bulls were part of Classical mythology for centuries, with bull worship shown in Cretan murals, and the animal itself being a symbol of power and virility. Even cave art in France shows pictures of the animal, especially in Chauvet. Historically, even Julius Caesar himself admits in his diaries that the animal was swift and aggressive when approached. In its natural habitat, its predators include wolves and bears, even though it was the calves that were most at risk.
The actual wild aurochs was used in the arena, pitted against gladiators and even other wild animals. Hunting for sport was also common, especially by nobles and kings in the Middle Ages. In the 13th Century and succeeding eras, the animal began to grow rarer, and finally it was extinguished by 1627. It was a female, and she died of natural causes in Poland’s Jaktorow Forest.
While the animal may be extinct, there has been talk of breeding back the aurochs for many years. The first step has been to breed back more aurochs-like characteristics into Europe’s most ancient cattle breeds. The hybrid was known as the Heck breed, and was first created in Germany in the Weimar Republic of the 1920’s. While the Heck cattle are marginally similar to aurochs, with their massive horns, there are still many differences. They are, for one thing, no bigger than regular cows and are stocky, while the aurochs had a lean physique. A further step in the project is the Taurus breed. Taurus cattle are in between the wild aurochs and Heck cattle in height, and are somewhere in between in terms of build too. Whether or not the aurochs will return to grace the European woodlands is a matter of debate but for now, the Taurus bull still marches on with the same pride as his ancestors did, centuries before him.
Elephant Bird
Location: Madagascar
Last seen: 1700s
It was the largest and most impressive bird in history, standing three meters tall and weighing half a ton. The elephant bird lives up to its name, and it was indeed not a running animal but a ponderous browser that ate from the treetops. Its bones are thick and powerful – elephantine almost – and it dominated the island of Madagascar until its extirpation. It was a ratite, meaning that it was closely related to modern flightless birds. Oddly enough, new evidence suggests that they are closer to kiwis than to ostriches. It means that this entire family once had a common ancestor. These massive birds only had to fear large eagles and powerful horned crocodiles at the water’s edge.
They fed on the tough fruits of varied species of palm and shared the island with the now-extinct dwarf hippos, monkey lemurs and sloth lemurs. Lemurs nowadays are small, but some of the extinct ones grew to gorilla size. Elephant birds were known to the ancient Madagascans as vorompatra, and even Arab traders who explored the Indian Ocean at the time were aware of its existence. This bird is thought to have died out by at least the 18th Century, and it may have been due to a number of factors. From subfossil remains, we can see that different members of the Madagascan extinct megafauna died out at different times in history and due to different reasons. More often than not, climate change was involved. Some of the giant lemurs died out long before any people set foot on the island while others feature in the country’s folklore.
Elephant birds were almost certainly exploited by the first colonists. Their eggs were among the largest known bird eggs, as much a meter in circumference and a length of 34 centimeters. They would have been an exceptionally filling and nutritious meal for a hungry hunter-gatherer. Of course it is not certain whether people wiped out the birds in a short time or if the extinction was much more gradual.
Certainly other animals like introduced rats, cats, dogs and pigs could also take elephant bird eggs. Plus, large-scale farming might have taken a massive toll on these birds. Their fragile ecosystem was often cleared for farmland as more and more advanced groups arrived on the island. This put an end not only to the titanic birds but also to many of the pygmy hippopotamuses and the country’s native predators. We still have the bird’s legacy though, in the form of Arabian myths and gigantic eggs which are so well preserved that they almost seem freshly laid.
Quagga
Location: South Africa
Last seen: August 12, 1883
While the Burchell’s zebra is still alive, its southernmost subspecies the quagga, is not. The animal’s name is pronounced “kwa-ha-ha,” and derives from the native South African Khoikhoi word for its call. It is always featured in textbooks as looking like a mix of zebra and horse. Certainly its hindquarters were much more horse-like than those of a regular zebra, its stripes receding into a rusty brown color. The quagga lived south of the Orange River region in rather arid areas. It was a grazer and moved in small herds. The quagga actually coexisted with regular Burchell’s zebras but there are no real records of them ever interbreeding.
It was most certainly exploited by both South African natives and white settlers. The Dutch especially hunted the quagga for both meat and its skin. The very last wild individual was killed off in 1878 in a rather quick extinction event. It was also exhibited in many European zoos, with the last mare dying out in Amsterdam’s Natura Artis Magistra Zoo. She died of unknown causes on August 12 1883. George Douglas, 16th Earl of Morton also made an actual attempt at conservation. In the 1820s he was the President of the Royal Society. He was able to cross a quagga stallion with an Arabian mare quite successfully. The resulting offspring was born with stripes on its legs. Later, the new hybrid was once again crossed, this time with a black stallion. This foal was also born with zebra stripes. This, however, was not enough to make the animal any commoner than it was before and it was definitely not enough to create a breeding population of domesticated quaggas. It was already rare at the time due to a great deal of hunting and added pressure from livestock grazing its wild pastures.
The quagga was the first extinct animal for which DNA was sequenced. It was this study, done in 1984, that revealed information concerning its relationship to zebras. Later studies cemented it as a mere subspecies. It is possible to breed back this animal, just as it is being done with the aurochs and Barbary lion. In 1987, the Quagga Project began in South Africa. A few rather quagga-like plains zebras were created via selective breeding. They may look like the extinct animal but are genetically different. As of 2004, a group of 83 animals was created, and they continue to breed, creating offspring more and more like the extinct quagga.
Passenger Pigeon
Location: North America
Last seen: September 1, 1914
This was once North America’s commonest bird, and its flocks, sometimes numbering many billions, darkened the skies on their migratory routes. The passenger pigeon’s extinction is widely remembered for this rather than the actual beauty of the individual bird. Some of the biggest flocks were over 300 miles in length and traveled at over 1,300 feet in altitude. None other than the great ornithologist and painter John James Aubudon himself once observed these creatures and their habits. At the height of their success these birds made up more than 25 to 40 percent of all land birds in North America. They were also the most abundant birds in the world at the time, and this makes their rapid extinction all the more tragic.
These pigeons were among the best fliers in their family with long, pointed wings and lengthy tail feathers. Male passenger pigeons were rather handsomely-plumed birds, with their bright peach breast, black-tipped wings and gray body feathers. Females and juveniles were rather drab by comparison. While they were excellent aeronauts these birds were also somewhat clumsy on land, waking with jerky motions of their heads. They mostly lived in the eastern and southeastern deciduous forests of the continent. They wintered in the states of Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Tennessee among others, while breeding occurred in parts of southern Canada, such as the Ontario region. The term ‘passenger’ comes from the French “passager,” for ‘passing by,” as they were nomadic birds.
Humans have always preyed on this bird, with the Native Americans trapping and hunting pigeons of this species. It was the European settlers who really put a dent in their populations. Many methods were used to take down the birds, from the traditional shotguns to pointed sticks and even expansive nets. In terms of eating the birds, they were not as costly as other meats and so they were an important source of food for the poor.
But there was another side to the massacre. For one, the birds were considered an agricultural pest. In the wild, these pigeons were omnivores that fed on both insects and plants. Farmers considered them a threat to their crops. While the flocks seemed near-indestructible for a long time, the effects of the slaughter began to be noticed soon enough. Bills were passed by a number of states to prevent the mass killing of the pigeon but it was all in vain at last, The flocks began to shrink down as time went by, and conservationists, while keenly aware, were helpless. Thus by the 1870s the number had begun to decimate, with tens of thousands of birds being shot on regular hunting trips.